


How to Propose to Sherlock Holmes

by StarkDusted



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A Proposal, Donovan is here for a line, Engagement, Fluff, How do I tag?, I couldn't help myself, John being clever, John is Perfect, John is a bit not good for his choice of proposal locations, M/M, Seriously a single line, Sherlock is a Brat, Smart!John, Some good banter as well, Someone teach me how to smut because I can never psych myself up for it, Tooth Rotting Fluff, Was sherlock really going to say anything but yes?, a case, all that matters is the fic, and if people couldn't figure it out, even if it was an accident, irrelevant, just for a bit, lestrade is still clueless, nothing new there, proposal, still smarter than the rest of the Yard though, the girlfriend was totes the one who killed Alex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 23:37:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7484424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarkDusted/pseuds/StarkDusted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hopefully the right mix of plot, case goodness, banter, and fluff.</p><p>Written for a kinkmeme prompt<br/>[JOHN bends over corpse]<br/>[Ring box falls out of JOHN'S pocket and opens]<br/>[Ring box contains...well, a ring. A wedding ring. A man's wedding ring]<br/>EVERYONE: 0_0<br/>JOHN: ...Well, I suppose now's as good a time as any. So, Sherlock, I was wondering...</p><p>Bonus Points -<br/>SHERLOCK: John, you've contaminated my crime scene!<br/>LESTRADE: ¬_¬ Your crime scene?</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Propose to Sherlock Holmes

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully seamless switches between the perspective, considering there’s quite a bit of inward debate in our boy’s heads...either way, enjoy, lovelies, and don’t forget to leave kudo’s and comments. If you wanted to send me through prompts, go ahead! Make them as detailed as you desire!
> 
> Also, I know nothing about asthma. Just the bits and pieces from when my brother was a short term sufferer. If I made mistakes and you know, please tell me so i can fix them!
> 
>  
> 
> My tumblr is tytysta  
> My email is sherlottebrookemoriarty@yahoo.com
> 
> ((Seriously guys, send me things. I’m dying on the inside, and I need inspiration like I need air. That, and I’m a people pleaser, and I ain’t afraid to admit it!))
> 
> Finally! This is unbeta'd. Sorry for mistakes. Give it a while and I'll re-read with a fresh mind and curse myself for my lack of literacy and correct spelling etc
> 
> Either way...ENJOY

It was as normal as any cold autumn’s day in London, beside the fact of course, that one Sherlock Holmes was completely and utterly bored. Well, that was rather common place if one was to listen to the constant bemoaning of his partner sprawled across the couch, though in Sherlock’s defence the fact nothing of even the slightest interest had occurred in the last two weeks gave perfect cause to his insufferable boredom. Cold eyes turned from the street below to the fireplace glimmering in hues of orange and gold, a stark contrast to the cold darkness of the encroaching shadows of the night beyond the walls of Baker Street.  Another day, been and gone, having died with the final light of the setting sun thirty-six minutes and twenty-eight seconds ago. Twenty-nine. Thirty.  
  
Every tick of that clock was enough to have Sherlock twitching in his skin, like it was pulled too tight around his mind, around his body, crushing him slowly from the inside out with every god-awful, tedious increment that it danced across the clock face.  
  
_Tick._  
  
Bored.  
  
_Tock._  
  
Dull.

_Tick._

Predictable.

_Tock._

God, he was seconds away from tearing down the clock from the wall and smashing it to pieces, and he would most _definitely_ enjoy every single _second_ of that.  
  
“Don’t you even dare, Sherlock.”

His eyes snap toward John, narrowed dangerously as his hands coil into tight fists. His mouth opened to deliver the most scathing comment his slowly atrophying and deteriorating mind could possibly conjure, only to be interrupted by the tell tale ring of his text alert.

John’s echo of “ _Finally,”_ echoed through the flat just beneath Sherlock’s own cry of victory. Finally indeed, and _yes_ , the message that flashed across the screen of his phone confirmed it.  
  
“We have a case, John! Get up, get ready, quickly! Now, John! One right in the middle of public, no suspects, and no evidence, apparently. Oh, I do love those ones!”  
  
John flashed him a look of partial amusement, and an expression that Sherlock had long since become familiar with as John’s ‘ _That’s just a bit not good, Sherlock,_ ’ face, not that he paid that any heed at all as he dashed bout the flat in a whirlwind.  
  
“It’s about time, I suppose. I was getting just as fidgety as you,” John notes as he gets to his feet, wandering off and slipping on his jacket, followed by his shoes as Sherlock tugs on his own coat and scarf, looking every part of the detective most recognised. Minus the Death Frisbee, of course.

“Obviously,” Sherlock drawls, flashing a sharp smile to the other. “You knew I was planning on smashing the clock to bits.”

“Bloody right I knew. You’ve been glaring at it more menacingly in the last half hour than when you glare at Mycroft when he comes over and eats all the ginger biscuits.”

Sherlock hesitates for but a moment as he pulls a glove on, brows furrowing minutely.

“I still dislike Mycroft’s presence more.”

“Thought you may say that,” John adds with a smile, shaking his head in bemusement as hurricane Sherlock disappeared down the stairs.

It’s eerily silent without Sherlock in the room, even when he can still hear the raven curled man shouting out to Mrs. Hudson that they’d be out for a bit and be back later. John straightens out his coat, fingers brushing over the lapels and pausing at the small bump hidden under the fabric and nestled against his chest. His lips thin as he pushes a hand into the inner breast pocket, pulling out a plain, velvety box, twisting it in his palms and listening to the resulting sound of fabric against skin that almost seems too loud for his ears.

It had been three long weeks he’d kept this damn box pressed against his chest everywhere he went, and John had begun to understand what people meant by the 'right moment'. So far, that moment hadn’t come, every time he had wondered if this was maybe it, the moment he would do the inevitable and finally get down on one knee, but no, every time he had held back because it hadn’t felt like the time.

He sighed loudly, cracking the lid open and staring down at the ring he had chosen specifically for Sherlock, sentiment and all.

John was snapped from his reverie by thunderous feet on the stairs, hastily snapping the ring box closed and obscuring it back in the breast pocket once more, and just in time, as a wild haired, bright verdigris eyed detective appeared in the doorway, bouncing from foot to foot in clear impatience.

“I hailed a cab three minutes ago, John, hurry up!”

“Right,” he says, flustered as he straightens himself back out, quickly following his over eager partner back down the stairs, and into the back of the cab within several swift beats of his heart, lest he desired an annoyed and particularly antsy detective on his hands.

The London side walk bleeds into colour in the night, especially after it had rained as it had before, the pavement a midnight black mirror reflecting everything back in a muted glow that gave the city an almost romantic feel. Tonight, the Eye was awash in a myriad of colour, flickering in a constant spectrum of colour across the Thames and the pavement below it, unlike the muted dark blue it had remained yesterday. They hop out of the cab after they make it over Westminster Bridge, wandering down the steps and past the London Dungeon as people run past in the flurry of early evening London.

John hadn’t even thought to have asked exactly what they were dealing with, given he'd been distracted with much more dire plans involving a certain box in the cab, so he was bloody surprised as they marched right up to the London Eye, face morphing into one of surprise at the crowd of tourists standing outside the yellow taped entrance to the attraction. “You’re joking. Someone killed someone....on the Eye?”  
  
Sherlock’s grin was almost predatory as he clapped his hands together; rubbing them as though he was trying to warm himself through the stiff dark leather of his gloves. “Locked capsule murder. Much better than a locked room one. And the distinct lack of witnesses as well, it’s brilliant isn’t it?”

“Hardly. Someone is still dead, Sherlock.”

“A necessary evil,” Sherlock answers with a dismissive wave of a hand, more interested in the high that came with the case than dwelling over the death that had occurred in order for him to obtain his aforementioned high.

John just gave a long suffering sigh, tugging up the tape and ushering Sherlock under as Lestrade ambles over with a perplexed look on his face. It was a usual look on the DI’s face whenever he encountered something particularly mind boggling, or something odd, so it wasn't exactly out of the ordinary.

“What do we have?” Sherlock asks as soon as he’s within range, and the DI just shakes his head.

“I’ve got a few ideas, though most of them seem to be fitting just a bit wrong.”

Sherlock cocks a brow at Lestrade, urging the man to explain with that single movement as they march forward and into the capsule, the body lying sprawled across the floor, just beside the seating area the Eye capsule held.

“Alex West, twenty three years old. Attends the University of London studying a few language degrees. Came out here with a date, having had enough money to pay for a capsule just for the two of them for two rotations. They were reportedly fine on the first rotation, but the second one ended in Alex West’s death. His girlfriend claims he had an asthma attack, considering he’s an asthmatic, a severe one at that. He didn’t have his puffer on him, and he died as a result.”

John frowned at that, eyeing Lestrade with a look of clear suspicion as Sherlock hummed in intrigue, squatting to study the corpse closer.

“A severe asthmatic not carrying his puffer? That sounds a bit suss, doesn’t it?”

Lestrade nods, bringing a hand up to card through his ever greying locks as he released a sigh of frustration. “Everyone else is ruling it as natural causes, but I thought that detail was off, so I called you two in.”

“You made the correct choice,” Sherlock informs from the floor, patting down the jeans of the body and tugging various bits out of the boy’s pockets, coming up with the cap to an inhaler, quickly followed by a brown inhaler.

“Preventer inhaler,” John jumps in.

“Yes, an Alvesco one.”

“Then it’s the one with Ciclesonide, a steroid one.”

“Extremely severe to have a steroid preventer and a reliever as well, and to carry the preventer on him meant he thought he wasn’t coming home tonight.”

“He thought he would stay the night at his girlfriend’s then,” John continues with a deep frown.

“Yes. And he packed a preventer, which means he should have had a reliever on him as well, no doubt. Preventers wouldn’t stop an attack, though what truly gets my attention is the fact it’s in his right hand pocket when he’s clearly left handed.”

“So it was...planted there? And the blue reliever was taken? Why?”

“Because the blue inhaler is our murder weapon. Poisoning is looking increasingly more likely,” Sherlock notes, shifting about the body before getting to his feet and scoping out the capsule itself.

“Bio-aerosol. Definitely would act faster.” That was the interesting part, the thing that caught John’s notice as soon as he looked at the corpse of the young man. Asthmatics usually died of asphyxiation due to the build-up of the mucus and the swelling of the bronchioles. However, this didn’t...look like asphyxiation. “How and when did the paramedics claim he died?” John turns his attention to Lestrade, raising a brow as he speaks.

“They said,” Lestrade begins, tugging out his notepad and flicking through a few pages, “he died roughly thirty minutes ago, by asphyxiation.”

“Wrong,” Sherlock interrupts.

“Well, that’s what the medics say!”

“They’re wrong,” they say in unison, and Lestrade looks on in an expression almost akin to horror.

“Oh, god, there’s _two_ of them,” The DI can’t help but breathe, and his only response is an apologetic shrug from John, and an overly dramatic roll of his eyes from Sherlock.

John gets back on his knees by the corpse, shifting down to peer into the airways of the victim again, looking them over from top to toe.

“If the man had died from asphyxiation first,” John begins, gesturing to the slackened expression on the man’s face, “his face would show intense signs of cyanosis and congestation, evidenced by the nose or the lips usually paling in colour or going white due to hypoxia and the pressure, and there would be petechial haemorrhages in the skin and the conjunctivae of the eyes.” At the blank looks he received from Lestrade and the rest of the Yard –Sherlock, of course, looking on proudly- he decided to dumb it down. “There would be more broken blood vessels than what is present here.”

“Jesus, why couldn’t you just say that?”

“Sorry. He rubs off on you when you live with him.”

“Don’t speak of it like it’s a bad thing,” Sherlock rebuts him, “the less idiotic you are, the more entertainment I receive from their expressions as you do your thing. However, John is correct, Lestrade.”

“Right...so if he didn’t die of asphyxiation, what did he die of, precisely?”

“Sudden cardiac arrest. His heart just ceased beating. It’s likely due to the increased stress put into his system, but the stressor would have been a poison, as Sherlock said. Difficulty breathing would be enough to cause the minor petechial haemorrhages you can see, similar to those a child gets for not breathing while vomiting. Pressure caused it, but it’s not enough to assume asphyxiation was the cause. Poison is the culprit here. You could probably get your answer from an analysis at the lab.”

Lestrade lets out a heavy breath of disbelief, shaking his head as John goes to get to his feet.

And then everything goes into slow motion as John feels the heavy presence that had been nestled against his breast slip loose, heart stilling in what felt like his own version of bloody cardiac arrest as the black box tumbles from his pocket, hitting the ground of the capsule with a clatter.

There isn’t a single word John can think of besides _fuck._

“John, you’ve contaminated my crime scene!”

“ _Your_ crime scene?” Lestrade inputs with the most indignant look on his face, and all Sherlock does is shoots him a look that clearly indicates that he’s contemplating if Lestrade is either immensely idiotic, deaf, or _both._

“That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”

John is still frozen, heart thumping hollowly in his throat, surprised Sherlock hadn’t even realised what the black box was. Yet.

Lestrade just throws his arms into the air, striding forward, and then promptly freezing as his eyes land on the thing responsible for the contamination of the crime scene, dark eyes blown wide as Donovan swears in disbelief in the background.

Sherlock pauses in obvious confusion, brows furrowed deeply as arctic ice eyes the colour of every shade of the sea possible shift between the DI and Donovan, the twin blue-green-gold orbs looking like shattered mosaics of crystalline glass as he tries to catch up on what he missed.

And that’s when John knows this is the moment.

He supposes it was inevitable really. It started with a crime scene, their little partnership, and it seemed it would begin again in a completely different way at another one, even if proposing over a corpse was perhaps a bit not good. His fingers deftly lift the black satin box from the floor, pulling himself into the proper, customary position that usually went along with proposing, just as Sherlock’s eyes swivel to him, and then promptly fall to the box in his hands.

“Oh.” It’s more a breath than a word, glacial eyes going wide in...surprise? Hope?

Lestrade begins to make his retreat, moving to get a better angle, but giving them the space that they needed, which John was thankful for, considering it felt like he couldn’t breathe, and he found that oddly amusing considering the case they were currently smack bang in the middle of solving. John keeps his eyes resolutely locked on Sherlock’s as he shifts the box in his palms, Sherlock’s eyes following the black object as he sinks to his knees in front of him.

“John?”

Sherlock sounded so lost at the same time that he sounds so utterly and completely elated, like he’d been saved, and John was his angel, his light, and good god, it was throwing John off.

“There’s no better time to do this than now, I suppose. I’ve been...waiting. For the right moment. This is as good a time as any, isn’t it?”

Sherlock merely nods slowly, eyes still blown wide, and John chuckles to himself, albeit nervously, but he had damn right to be.

“Sherlock Holmes. You have saved me in every definition that a man can be saved, even when you mope about the flat like a six year old child that doesn’t get their way, or storing various body parts in the kitchen for me to find. Your bad habits make you who you are, and I’m just as in love with the utterly mad habits and idiosyncrasies you have as I am with your mind, your soul, and just _you_ in general. From the good to the bad. I was so lost, Sherlock. And then you came along, and you gave me purpose. More than I ever thought possible, and I never, ever want to lose that. I want for us to be stay like this, and the one way of showing my commitment to you, and to the world is this. To prove that you are mine, and I am yours.”

Sherlock just stares on, blinking furiously as he restrained the odd surge of emotion that as settling in his chest, eyes drifting down again as John opened the box, holding it up for his eyes to memorise. To never forget this moment. To store it away in the most important, impenetrable wing of his mind palace where only the best of memories resided, and it would stay there until he had turned to dust.

The band itself was the darkest of grey titanium, inlaid with diamonds across the top in the centre, expensive, yes, and something that definitely looked as though it belonged on Sherlock’s finger as a symbol of them, whole, solid, physical, _permanent_ evidence that they were one another’s. Sherlock’s breath caught in his chest as his eyes found the barest hints of an inscription along the inside, and Sherlock very nearly laughed as his words were repeated back to him from so long ago.

_Could be dangerous._

Oh, wasn’t everything dangerous with them? It’s what made their lives with one another an unending adventure. Slowly his eyes raised back to his partners, his soon to be fiancé’s, -because how could any person, sane or not, say no- nodding slightly and urging the man on as he clearly steeled himself for the final, world-altering, mind-stopping words.

“What I’m asking, is if you would be mine, till death do us part, and all of those other vows that we'll say sometime in the future." If this all went right, that was, John's mind offered in correction. "William Sherlock Scott Holmes. Please, would you do me the honour of marrying me?”

Sherlock couldn’t speak. Really, there wasn’t any need to, not immediately. The whispers of the watching audience sounded like nothing more than the drifting breeze of the wind, insignificant in this pivotal moment. John and he lived in their own personal universe that had no constraints upon them that usually applied in everyday reality. Time didn’t exist. The world around them didn’t exist. It was them. That was all, and that was enough to speak for itself as Sherlock closed the distance, and pressed his lips to the older man’s, one word forming breathlessly on his lips.

 

_Yes._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not even sorry for writing this. An hour and a half of un-beta'd goodness.


End file.
